This stirring new production of The Promise by Deafinitely Theatre, the UK’s first deaf-launched and led professional theatre company, explores the limitations in finding care for elderly deaf people who develop dementia, and the impact it has on their families.
The Promise is performed in spoken English, British Sign Language (BSL) with captions, and is in collaboration with Birmingham Rep and Lyric Hammersmith Theatre.
Using the framework of an already fractured family, The Promise juxtaposes the present day with flashbacks.
The life of The Promise’s main protagonist Rita, has been based around her activism for Deaf rights within the education system, with a particular focus on BSL against oralism. Rita proudly says: “My hands are my voice.”
The play opens with Rita, as a vibrant young teacher delivering a BSL class to deaf children on Shakespeare’s sonnet 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” The play then moves forward in time to a now retired Rita, being visited by her estranged son Jake, who has returned briefly to England from the Netherlands for his father’s funeral. Jake feels let down by his mother because she broke her promise to attend his same sex wedding in Amsterdam. His mother seems to be confused and is struggling with her memory, and Jake realises that Rita is potentially showing signs of dementia.
Jake gets a wake up call when his initial hopes of finding a quick solution to his mother’s needs are brutally shattered when he has to step up and navigate the labyrinthine broken social care system on his mother’s behalf. Jake gets Lasting Power of Attorney, and Rita is then put through a series of needs assessments, all of which are designed primarily for hearing people.
Jake discovers that there is only one Care Home in the whole of the UK country (Easthill, Isle of Wight) which caters for deaf BSL signing residents. Easthill only accommodates fifteen residents, and is inevitably is over-subscribed.
Rita ends up in a mainstream Care Home, and experiences further isolation and interaction issues because her carers don’t sign.
Failure of communication and its consequences is a central theme of The Promise, and this is further emphasised with the on-going dysfunctional relationship between mother and son.
Anna Seymour gives a gentle, nuanced performance as Rita, while James Boyle, (the first deaf man accepted into the drama school RADA,) is compelling as Jake. Along with her other roles, Erin Hutching is excellent as a patronising, nescient social worker, and Louis Neethling is convincing as the stubborn, homophobic father Mike.
The Promise is back screened throughout by evocative visuals created by Ben Glover, and the repeated use of the image of falling blossom (“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May”) is resonantly used to reference the transient fragility of the human condition.
Written by Paula Garfield the Artistic Director of Deafinitely Theatre and journalist Melissa Mostyn, The Promise is a tightly scripted piece that unapologetically gives a damming indictment about the dereliction of duty of care by the healthcare system to cater for the needs of the ageing BSL signing deaf population.
The Promise is at Lyric Hammersmith Studio until 11th May 2024
